in my mailbox today….the British Vogue featuring us in their 2016 Wellbeing Directory of the jannuary issue – for a good reason, I’m telling you, we have differents retreats scheduled for you in the new year with Martina Fink – Beauty & Life Coach

the other day we had a conversation. We had it before, about a billion times for sure, but than it was super acute – thanksgiving/left overs/ food waste. What to do? what is the solution? I don’t have one, but I am aware that I have to do my best to recycle and save sources where I can. So I dehydrate, I puree, I water, let’s say I experiment.

My path brought me to the organic store in my neighbour hood, veggies are expensive here, I know and I don’t mind, I want them to be as pure as possible as they will enter and nourish my organism plus this local buisness needs to be supported. Yes! So sometimes when I get there and I’m lucky they have a selection of not so super pretty products, means apples or carrots with wrinkles or soft sweet peppers (which actually have reached their zenith of vitamin content at that point!)

That particular morning I found something new, saw it before in the shop, but so far they did not really call my attention, had no idea who they were and what to do with them. Now they where here, sorted out and waiting to be taken home instead of being thrown away, I suppose many of my neighbours don’t know how to use my new favorite vegetable. Anyway i bought one of the boxes full of these ‘roots’? what are they? I had no time to search the web, and a friend coming over for lunch, so my instinct told me to simply boil them.

Here they are. Topinambur. We looked them up. And they taste AMAZING. a mix of potato (look/texture) carrot (flavor) nuts (flavor) and sorry about that fish (texture)

Foto: Lorenzo Melissari

People call them differently – Jerusalem artichoke, Sunchoke (as they belong to the family of sunflowers, Helianthus tuberosus, lat.) what seemed interesting was the diabetic potato, for it’s texture and it’s said that for it’s high content in fibers and low content in carbohydrates, can lower the blood sugar level. I will investigate on that one…

So far I have to delicious ways to prepare them, one path is in the dehydrator and will be serve as RAW chips on thursday in the #labcuina. If you are interested in new flavors come visit me in the lab, versions of topinambur my topic of the week!

About Karma Yoga….

did I ever tell you story? Years ago I was ready for a complete reset of life. So I asked for it and got it. I went to volunteer in a spiritual community and felt so wise and enlightened to be able to leave everything I created and achieved behind. Don’t remember what I actually expected but not that I would be doing mountains of laundry of strangers and weeding a abandoned back yard in the rain.

Day 1 diggin weeds. Boring.

Day 2 digging weeds. Hated it, had blisters on my hand.

Day 3, 4, 5 digging weeds because I had to.

Day 6 digging weeds. No digging weeds. The master would tell me the day after a guy from the village would come with his tractor.

I raised an eyebrow and understood. Thank you I said while looking at the clouds and I moved on to the kitchen, my new *job* in the community. I learned to cook for large groups, learned how to estimate and calculate amounts.`Might cultivate this skill for later, who knows` my subconscious told my ego, and all agreed to stay open and receptive.

Karma Yoga – selfless practice and the accepting of what comes. No judging or questioning. Following my Dharma is giving me a certain sensation of PEACE.

And here I am. With this project. Having people helping me, just because they want. At the end all makes sense. Karma yoga is my practice, will stick with this one!

I am no master I know nothing….but I am a servant and I no something – I am no master I know something

Sometimes I cook, sometimes I teach yoga, always I learn. Massive thanks to my yoga students for coming to the #labcuina to have lunch in our open kitchen. There is always an exchange, thank you for your interest and your questions, thank you for making me think and rethink, how would I move on without the interest of students.

HAPPY TO SERVE

Sweet potatoe crumble with baked veggies. The crumble was super easy to make, mixed oats with nutritional yeast, for the cheezy flavour, oregano and oil and peacans of course, you could also use walnuts or almonds without any doubt but me, in this case I was looking forward to the pecany crunch in particular. Up to you – as always. Don’t believe in recipes, please.

BTW I’m listening to this right now:

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Fotos by Lorenzo Melissari

what you need for that ginger dessert, perfect on a december afternoon when you don’t have to leave the house and find time to sit still with a mug of tempered hOMemade vanilla almond milk.

1 tablespoon chia seeds

3 tablespoons water

1 cup unsweetened pumpkin puree

1/3 cup coconut oil

3 tablespoons pure maple syrup

1/2 cup coconut sugar

2 tablespoons grated ginger

1 2/3 cups spelt flour

1/2 tablespoon cinnamon

1/2 tablespoon nutmeg

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon fine sea salt

1/2 cup chopped walnuts

preheat your oven to 180°, meanwhile mix all ingredients and fill the dough into a muffin tray or a cake form. Bake for 20mins (muffins) to 50mins (cake loaf) and let cool down for 15mins before enjoying the outcome with your friends. #PEACE

When we were on our way to Cataluna we thought we would only stay for half a day in Barcelona and then move on to an ecological project in the Pyrenees to do our internship for university there.

As life is as unpredictable we received a message from our host in the mountains. We were on the bus from Germany to Spain already when we were asked to come a whole week later due to internal problems at the place.

First we were a shocked as we had already arranged our bus to the Pyrenees and had not calculated any accomodation costs in Barcelona as we did not expect any complications.

Thinking about possible ways to have an interesting time in this big city, we finally remembered Pranakitchen.

We had been following read Martina’s blog, and new she was currently based in Barcelona.

As we found ourselves in quite an urgent situation we simply wrote an email to Martina and actually didn’t expect her to have nor the capacity neither the time to host us. Far from it!

She was the only one who wrote back to us – nobody on e.g. couchsurfing did.

This made it possible for us to have an awesome week in Barcelona and learn about Martina’s delicious, healthy vegan kitchen. We even had the possibility to help her to prepare a big Pranakitchen event which was super inspiring and a lot of fun!

We cut vegetables together, baked cookies, had interesting conversations and also got to know another sweet helper of her who volunteered for a day.

Martina is an openhearted, very welcoming, dedicated and conscious power woman!

Thank you very much for this beautiful experience, Martina. We’re grateful to have met you and hope you will continue inspiring others.

Last wednesday we went to Vienna/Austria to talk about conscious nutriton aka *yoga on the plate* at a viennese vegan Supermarket (Maran Vegan) besides that super amazing workshop there were these mouthwatering eye catchers I could not resist to bring back hOMe and transform into some serious gourmet RAW food

so good, so easy, so fresh – have a look:

giant beautiful portobello heads, rubbed them with a mix of virgin olive oil and tamari sauce. If you have a dehyrator have them there for ybout 3hrs, i do have one but it stayed in Barcelona this time so I had them in the oven, lowest temperature until they were soft and filled the hood with an amazing smell.

once they came out from the oven, ready to be served i filled them with this creamy sunflowerseed spread I made while they baked – soak half a cup of sunflower seeds for about 4hrs, strain, and mix them with 2 spoons of nutritional yeast and one spoon of miso, add fresh jive and your favorite seasoning, this time I used oregano.

Spread it on both of your *burger patties* and fill them with sliced tomato, cucumber, carrots, sprouts and what ever you can think of that might make your version complete.